


By Any Definition

by WimseyLady



Category: Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WimseyLady/pseuds/WimseyLady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nicholas notices something is wrong with his friend, Smike cannot hold his secret in any longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Definition

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fanfic. It started life as a collection of dialogue after I saw the film with Charlie Hunan and Jamie Bell. It may never have gone any further than my notebook but I finally thought, "why not", so here it is.

# By Any Definition

Nicholas tapped softly on the door, unsure if the occupant slept, unwilling to wake him if he did. Smike had left dinner so quickly that evening, his plate barely touched, and he had been so subdued of late. His life had been so full of fear and uncertainty for so long that Nicholas knew it would take him time to become completely at ease in his new life, to be completely sure of it, but he had thought Smike was showing progress, even happiness. He worried that this sudden depression of his manner signaled something deeper and more serious. He found his stomach in knots at the prospect.  
  
The voice that bade him enter sounded hopeless.   
  
Smike was stretched out on the top of his coverlet, his hands clasped together upon his chest. His body appeared dwarfed by the bed. Even after weeks of full meals, a warm bed, and the care of a family Smike was still all angles and edges. Nicholas supposed under different circumstances – a careful upbringing, love and comfort… a leg straight and strong – Smike would have appeared tall. Not tall like Nicholas, perhaps, but straight and steadfast… handsome. _He is handsome _, an inner voice objected, as eyes scanned the now familiar face on the pillow. He has gained color, and there is a new brightness to his cheeks, and in his eyes. _His smile lights him up from the inside. _But Smike did not smile as Nicholas entered his room, carefully closing the door behind him. He simply watched with dark, guarded eyes.____  
  
“You barely touched your dinner,” Nicholas chided gently. “Are you unwell?”   
  
Smike looked away. “I am not hungry.” Then, “Please offer my apologies to Kate and your mother. I meant no offense to their cooking.”   
  
“And none was taken,” Nicholas replied quickly. “They are merely worried… I am worried.”   
  
Emotion – Regret? Pain? Misery? – contorted Smike’s face. “Then I am doubly sorry.”   
  
Nicholas advanced on him, closing the gap in two strides and crouching beside the bed. “Please, do not distress yourself further on my account.” He cocked his head to one side. “My friend, won’t you tell me what causes you to be so melancholy? I wish only to help you if I can.”   
  
Smike looked down at the hand that had come to rest on his arm and ached to cover it with his own but dared not. He could feel the warmth radiating through his skin, down to his bones. He could feel the familiar tingle that buzzed through his body every time Nicholas brushed against him, every time their fingers met on the salt seller or the coat rack. He knew it was accidental on Nicholas’ part but he could not claim the same innocence. He had never had a friend before; someone who smiled at him, and patted his shoulder. Someone who glowed like the morning sun. Smike felt like a plant after the biting cold of a long winter, something green and unimportant but struggling towards the sun. He knew if he could only bask in that glow he would grow strong. He didn’t need to be any closer than the ground beneath Nicholas’ magnificence, but he needed at least that. He craved it. To lose it would be an agony. He would wither and die if Nicholas ever turned away from him, but how could it end any other way? His secret…   
  
“Smike.” The tone said Nicholas had called his name before. The concern pulled him back to his little bedroom in their little house, and a new wave of shame and guilt flooded over him, hot and poisonous.   
  
Crouched before him Nicholas’ face softened; worry clouding his blue eyes, a frown drawing his brows together. “Smike,” he said again, as if gentling an animal. He moved his hands to cover the clenched fists of his friend. Smike hadn’t realized he had made the fists. He watched in agony as the strong, warm hands eased the wrinkled fabric from his grasp. “Won’t you tell me what troubles you so that we might find a solution together,” he begged as he stroked the clenched fingers straight.  
  
“I am in love with you.”   
  
Nicholas froze.   
  
Smike froze.   
  
He had not intended to say it. Not ever. He had promised himself the words would never pass his lips even as they had first formed in his heart. Promised himself he would never burden his glorious friend with the ugly truth. Never soil him with such vile thoughts. But now those words hung between them in the air; snowflakes at once beautiful and fragile and chilling. Smike couldn’t bear to look at the horror on Nicholas’ face so his eyes remained fixed upon his lap. He dragged his hand from beneath his friend’s motionless fingers, and clasped them together on his thighs.   
  
Nicholas’ hands felt unaccountably empty, but the message was clear. He withdrew his arms from the bed and rocked back on his heels; awkward and self-conscious. Then with care that was like a knife to Smike’s heart, Nicholas said, “You are my good friend…”   
  
But it was at once too much to contain. “My heart is full of you,” Smike cried, eyes grabbing Nicholas’ gaze and holding fast. “And all my thoughts. And I am ashamed.” He tore his face away and squeezed his hands white in his distress. “You have been the truest friend to me. Opened your home and your heart…” His voice was a whisper, “and yet I am discontented.” He dared to raise his eyes and risk the heartbreak that awaited him.   
  
Nicholas looked shocked. His lips were slightly parted, his chest high as if he had taken a breath to speak but found himself mute. There was no condemnation in his eyes, only that same gentle worry that he always carried when he looked at Smike, and a directionless confusion that furrowed his brow. Smike wished he had the right to smooth the lines away.   
  
The air was still. Charged.   
  
Nicholas wet his lips.   
  
“Nicholas, Mrs. La Creevy is come.” Kate’s voice was at once jarring and unwelcome, and the two young men started and looked at each other desperately.  
  
“The rent,” Nicholas murmured, rising slowly to his feet. “They would think it amiss if I…”   
  
“You must go, of course,” Smike replied.  
  
Nicholas hovered awkwardly, an agony of indecision. Then, with one last glance at Smike, strode abruptly from the room.   
  
The room was in shadow but for the small lamp glowing on the nightstand and the remnants of a fire burning orange coals in the grate. Neither brought Smike comfort as he folded the last of his meager possessions on the coverlet of his bed but he knew it had little to do with the room. Unshed tears blurred his vision and there was an icy knot of loss in the pit of his stomach. He felt small and miserable.   
  
“You do not mean to leave us?”   
  
The sudden voice made Smike look up, but the sight of Nicholas standing tall and beautiful in the doorway as quickly drove his eyes back to the bed. “I am afraid I must.”  
  
He had hoped to sneak away unnoticed while the family slept. It was late, and he had spent what felt like hours listening to the bright voices and even brighter laughter of the family as they entertained Mrs. La Creevy. True he had not heard Nicholas’ pleasant tenor very often amongst the girlish sopranos – and he had strained to hear him until his head hurt – but neither had his friend returned to him. He had not expected him too. It was too much to hope the older boy could even look at him again after his clumsy confession let alone find the words to speak to him. _You are my good friend _… echoed in Smike’s head over and over until they were no more than an incessant buzz of sound. And each thrill they brought him at the concept of having a good friend was crushed beneath the damning knowledge that he had thrown it all away. He swallowed, and smoothed an invisible wrinkle in the folded shirt before him.__  
  
“Where will you go?” Nicholas’ voice was soft, but not pleading.   
  
_So he will not even try to stop me._  
  
“I have a place,” he lied, but they both knew it as such.  
  
The silence stretched unbearably. Smike wished he were agile enough to get to his feet and depart the room, depart the house, with grace and dignity, but his crippled leg made him clumsy and pathetic, and he would not let that be the last thing Nicholas remembered of him so he sat still staring at his hands.  
  
“Sometimes…” The usually strong voice faltered and Smike dared a glance at his friend.   
  
Nicholas was frowning at the carpet – it looked unnatural on a face meant to smile – but it was not aimed at Smike and so he continued to look. He had already committed to memory every plane and surface of Nicholas’ exquisite face; every curve and line of his magnificent body, but he drank it all in again while he could. The educated man was looking for the right words, Smike knew enough of him to understand that, but it seemed the words would not come. Despite himself he felt a flicker of hope; he still meant enough for Nicholas to choose his words with care then? Nicholas had never been cruel.   
  
With a deep inhalation of breath, Nicholas drew himself up and looked into Smike’s eyes as the words flowed, “Sometimes I look in on you before I go to bed… just to check you are not awake and in need. Not a day goes by when something does not happen that makes me wish you had witnessed it with me, or that I do not commit to memory some vision or word so that I may repeat it in detail to you later.” His features gentled. “I enjoy making you smile above all others, and your laughter draws me from any melancholy. I would do battle with any who would challenge you, and I dread the day we will be parted forever.” He lowered himself to the opposite side of the bed and reached for Smike’s hand. “That is love, I think, by any man’s definition, and it fills my heart as surely and completely as it fills yours.”   
  
Silence fell over the room.   
  
The embers popped in the fireplace.  
  
A clock chimed elsewhere in the little house but neither man marked the time.  
  
Smike stared at the two hands enjoined on the bed.   
  
“Can you not speak?” Nicholas asked eventually, with a soft laugh and a shake of Smike’s hand. “Or do you mean to leave me in this agony as I left you so many hours ago?” He watched his own fingers as they began stroking back and forth across the skin of Smike’s knuckles. “I was taken by surprise, and I am sorry my friend…” He looked up. “…my dearest.”   
  
Goose bumps raced across Smike’s body at the touch of Nicholas’ fingers. He could feel his body coming alive beneath the tender ministrations, but through the blood that was roaring in his ears he felt he had misheard… misunderstood. His eyes were full of bewilderment when he looked up. It couldn’t be true. It was not possible.   
  
“I don’t understand,” he said.   
  
The answering laugh was bright and beautiful, and Smike felt a smile lift his features despite himself.   
  
“Then I will endeavor to be more plain,” Nicholas replied, lifted the cold face with his gentle hands, and reverently placed a kiss on Smike’s lips.   
  
His intention had been to seal his vow with a gesture of warmth and love such that he felt in his breast when he looked at his friend. It had taken him all evening to settle his thoughts on the matter while the trio of women had chattered about their days, their needlepoint, blissfully unaware of the torment he was in. He kept seeing that look on Smike’s face as he had declared his love with that fierce brightness in his eyes that had disappeared so quickly. And then the look on his face as he had realized his error and Nicholas had remained mute. Nicholas had almost leapt to his feet at that moment and run back to Smike’s room to beg his forgiveness, and would have done so if his sister had not taken that moment to request his aid with the tea things. And so instead of running out of the room and spilling a confusion of emotions onto the bedroom rug of his friend, Nicholas had spent the better part of two hours boiling water, steeping tea, cutting respectable pieces of fruitcake, and washing all the crockery after. And it had been perfect. He had thought about taking tea to Smike - he liked it sweet and milky, and he cupped the china in both hands to absorb all the warmth he could. He had thought about Mrs. Squeers as he’d cut the fruitcake and the truly dreadful version she served as a “treat”, and the way he had joked about it in the dark later, Smike pressed against his side for warmth. Nicholas had made him laugh; the sound soft and unfamiliar in that evil place, and all the sweeter for it. The sound had vibrated through his body and, since they were pressed together from shoulder to hip, Nicholas had felt it; had shivered with it. He had thought about the times he had watched Smike from the classroom window shivering in the cold, heaving buckets of water, bowing under the weight of work that was crippling his already damaged frame. And he had realized how often his heart had leapt at the sight of his silent friend. Just a flash of his pale face beyond the classroom door, or across the kitchen space, or smiling up at him from the floor in front of their meager stove with such adoration in his eyes. Nicholas had dropped a cup as he realized it. He had not even heard it clatter, miraculously undamaged, as he had realized it. He was in love with Smike.   
  
So now, as his lips brushed the soft flesh of the other mouth all intentions of chaste warmth and love fled from his head. He gasped at the contact and surged forward, the hands that framed Smike’s face shaking with the force of his desire.   
  
The other boy gave a hiccup of frantic emotion, his hands clutching at Nicholas’s lapels until the older boy tore their mouths apart and rested their foreheads together, forcing a shaky breath, searching for control for both of them.   
  
“Smike,” he breathed against his lips. “My Smike…”   
  
“I did not dare hope…”  
  
“And I did not dare think… that all of my future plans – and happiness – could rest on the shoulders of one person.” Nicholas met his companion’s eyes. “On your shoulders, Smike.”   
  
Hope swelled bright in brown eyes. “You are saying that you love me.” It was almost a question.  
  
Nicholas smiled his golden smile. “I am saying that I love you,” he confirmed, and then kissed Smike once again. 


End file.
